


But then he's still left with his hands

by aquietpining (formytroubledmind)



Series: & other body parts [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hands, Holding Hands, M/M, Mild spoilers for season 4, Shiganshina Trio, mild spoilers for chapter 122
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 06:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30017613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formytroubledmind/pseuds/aquietpining
Summary: The green-eyed boy with soft hands had become monstrous.
Relationships: Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager, Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman & Armin Arlert & Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman/Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager
Series: & other body parts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2217615
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	But then he's still left with his hands

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Siken's _Boot Theory_ :
> 
> A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river  
>  but then he’s still left  
> with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away  
>  but then he’s still left with his hands.

i.

The first time they meet, Eren’s hands are fists, and they are punching his bullies.

They are also sticky and warm as he pulls Armin to his feet. The same reddened hands are surprisingly gentle as they dust Armin’s shoulders and pick the dirt off his blue coat.

Eren is the first to speak. “You shouldn’t let them bully you,” he says matter-of-factly, still slightly out of breath. Mikasa stands behind him, feet already in a stance, watching them.

(Even then, Armin remembers thinking there was something almost feral in the way he’d screamed and hit them, even after they’d curled up and begged for mercy. But he also remembers distinctly thinkingthat it didn’t matter because the green-eyed boy was on his side. He’d promised it would always be that way.)

Armin, wiping his eyes, merely sniffles. “It’s okay.”

Eren sounds incredulous. “No, it’s _not._ You never fight back. You’ll be losing _forever_!”

Armin lowers his gaze. “Not running doesn’t mean I’m losing,” he says, lamely.

And Eren takes his hands, again, and simply says, with as much conviction as his little body would bear: “You can’t just _take it._ You gotta stand up for yourself.”

He adds, “Or I’ll do it for you.”

Mikasa nods.

-

ii.

His fingers are jabbing hard at Armin’s picture book, pointing at the blue hues that filled the page. “So that’s the ocean?”

“Yes,” Armin says softly. “A salt lake so big that no one could deplete it. Not even in a lifetime.”

“We’ll see the ocean then,” Eren decides. He clambers to the top of the rock that they were leaning on and gestures wildly. Mikasa grabs on to his shirt as he wobbles precariously.

“We’re gonna see the ocean!” He shouts, as if he could conjure the possibility by sheer force of will. “We’re gonna!”

“You promise?” Armin says. No one had taken it seriously before - the boys at school merely laughed and called him names, and his grandfather had become quiet and still when he’d asked. He looks up at Eren, still standing with arms stretched out proud above him on his perch on the rock. If he squinted in the bright sunlight it was almost as if the rays had settled around the other boy’s head, crowning him in a halo.

“I promise,” Eren declares, and he leaps down to grab Armin’s hand, shaking it vigorously to seal the deal. Mikasa, standing solemnly with them, had acted as witness.

-

iii.

“The hand is the visible part of the brain,” Armin said to him once. “Kant.”

“ _What?_ ” Eren, misunderstanding, was momentarily startled.

Armin had blushed. “No -it’s the guy who said it. It’s from the book-”

“Go on,” Eren said. A mischievous smile crept across his lips. “ _Kant,_ ” he repeated, and sounded gleeful.

Armin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “It’s in this book my grandpa read. He told me about it.”

(He’d said, look at my hands. Look at how much I love you. And he’d stretched them out, wider than Armin, as wide as they could go, waggled his fingers and reached toward to wrap the little boy up in a big hug.

That night, still buzzing with warmth, Armin had lain in bed and imagined his grandfather’s hands in abstract, muscles flickering underneath the his mottled skin as he worked hard at kneading the dough which sat resting in lumps under tea towels. His wrinkled hands, leathery with age and sun, tucking him into bed and ruffling his hair in bursts of affection. These were the same strong hands that held him tightly when they got the news about his parents.)

Eren threw himself back on Armin’s bed and sighed loudly. Armin, lost in his thoughts, looked up.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand what you’re thinking,” he says slowly, waving his own hands around lazily before letting them flop to his sides. “But - I could always hold your hand.”

And Armin had laughed, and reached over to lace their fingers together. “I guess.”

-

iv.

In training Mikasa was effortless and Eren was dogged and Armin was left trying his best, which was not very good at all.After a particularly gruelling time with Shadis, Armin had simply collapsed behind the boy’s barracks and cried. Ugly, heaving sobs, snot running over his ill-fitting uniform and blue eyes ringed in red. Eren had found him and wrapped him in a hug. And after that he’d grasped his hands and _squeezed._

Training seemed to bring out the best and the worst in him - these were the same hands that had gripped the practice knife so tightly the wood warped in his grasp and he'd _snarled_ as he lunged forward, but there were also moments where his face would soften and he'd grab Armin's pack for him, slinging it over his shoulder and brushing off his protests. 

Armin remembers his white-knuckled grip as he slashed at the decoy titan's foam neck, but he also remembers Eren's hands, reaching under the thin blankets, across their rickety beds, to deliver a soft touch to his, as if to say: _I’m still here. I’m still here._

He looks across the other boy's sleeping figure and their intertwined fingers resting among the sheets, gently running circles on the back of his hand until he too gave in to exhaustion. 

-

v.

It was the same hand that he’d reached for desperately, the same hand attached to the disembodied arm that had flown out in a spray of blood as the titan clamped its jaws shut and Eren was swallowed whole.

He’d burned himself pulling Eren out the first time. In his desperation to curl his fingers around Eren’s, he’d scalded himself as he snatched up his limp hand not caring about the blisters that grew there afterward but only about holding him again. _I’m still here, I’m still here._

And he’d done it again. And again. This time Eren had his arms wrapped around him and face buried in his shoulder, muttering into him,

_sorry sorry sorry._

Mikasa made a face, but busied herself with binding up Armin’s reddened palms, careful not to let him blister.

The other boy’s hands were gripping him tightly, his nails digging into the tender flesh.

Eren, he said, softly. Eren, you’re hurting me. Eren had loosened his grip, but the little crescents where his fingers had pressed into Armin’s sides remained along his ribs.

-

vi.

And it was Eren’s turn soon after, when they’d returned what was left of their home, when Armin woken up with a splitting headache - the last thing he remembered was Eren’s grip in his, before he’d let go and leapt off the wall - and again the other boy’s hands are wrapped around his and they are red and raw because he’d hurt himself in reaching for his friend.

“Armin,” he said - and those familiar, weary hands were on his cheeks, down his shoulders, pulling him close.

“You’d live long, remember?” Eren was already moving to trace the lifeline on his right palm. And he had chuckled wryly. “Certainly longer than me, anyway.”

He’d only managed to glimpse at Eren’s own: a short, broken line, before emotion overcame him and he collapsed and pulled the other boy into a hug.

But in that moment, waking up, Armin knew that the other boy was right.

-

vii.

When they finally saw the sea, Armin had cupped his hands in the cool, shimmering water and called the other boy’s name.

But Eren wouldn’t be caught up with the waves and wasn’t listening to Sasha’s laughter or Connie’s shouts. Instead he looked over to the ocean and stretched out a single arm, narrowed to a pointing finger.

Armin was close enough to hear him whisper: ”If we kill them all - does that mean...we'll be free?”

For once, he didn’t have the answer.

-

viii.

“We’re losing him,” he said to Mikasa, and her eyes had flashed with something dark.

In a sudden move, in an uncharacteristic fit of desperation, she placed her hands on top of his and instinctively he moved away, the gesture suddenly feeling wrong, too intimate.

Mikasa shrunk back, pulling her scarf around her nose and ducking her head.

“What do we do now?” she said, slowly.

When she raised her hands to her face, knuckling her eyelids, he noticed her nails were short and ragged, bitten down to the quick.

“I don’t know,” he said, echoing what they all felt, and for weeks after the other boy had gone his hands had clenched and unclenched, picked at hangnails, and busied themselves with wringing each other. But most of all they were noting the absence.

-

ix.

This time Eren’s hands were across the ocean, writing rambling letters in a shaky script, writing things no one should say:

_I’m not coming back until we get this done. You can’t win if you don’t fight._

Armin had merely written back, _can’t we talk?_

And then the letters had stopped coming and Armin supposed that he had already gotten his answer.

-

x.

Above Liberio, the last time they touched: Eren’s hands were hard and calloused, stained with blood. Armin supposed his were too.

Armin slid the airship door open and looked down to see Eren clung to its side, long hair blowing in the wind. His wide eyes were blank and unfocused. In the dark they were dirty brown and Armin saw the burning city reflected in them.

Mikasa was behind him. Her red scarf trailed out behind her and she had a hand on his back to steady him. She wore an unreadable expression.

At the sound of the scraping metal Eren had looked up. Their eyes met in the sudden light of an explosion and for a moment his eyes were sea green again, green clashing with blue, the colours of the churning ocean that had grown between them, before Armin knelt down and slowly extended his hand.

And then Eren was grasping it, his hands big and rough and grip surprisingly strong. He let the other boy haul him up, interlocked fingers lingering for a second. 

Armin was the first to let go, wordlessly wiping his sweaty palms on his uniform.

Eren was watching, and he did so too.

-

xi.

When Eren said, I’ve always hated you, and Mikasa began to cry, he launched himself across the table, hands balled into fists, and rained down blows on his best friend.

-

xii.

Jean told him later that the last time they’d seen Eren, he’d held up a single, bloody hand, weeping wound in the center or his palm - a stigmata, a threat - and he and his disciples had gone on their way.

(Maybe then, Armin thinks, a punch is a kiss, so when he’d dealt Eren a blow right across the face, dangerously close to his lips, it was the most tender way to say goodbye.

And so then maybe when Eren responded with his fists, it was a trail of kisses: violent and relentless, down his own face, across his cheeks, _right on his mouth,_ until he doubled over and fell to his knees.

And it maybe it was one last act of intimacy, Eren panting into his face, his hands in his hair. Just not in the way that he’d imagined.)

-

xiii.

As Eren lets out a last, terrifying roar, Armin takes a deep breath. Feeling the electricity in the air and lightning arc around him, he bites down hard on his empty hand.

**Author's Note:**

> no one cares but I wanted 7 vignettes for the sake of completeness and ~symbolism~ but this accidentally grew for reasons not entirely within my control - anyway, it's 13 parts! i might sneakily edit as/when so I expect it might change as I go...anyway read into this what you will. & come back for updates!
> 
> also shamelessly inspired by this: https://lazy-afternooner.tumblr.com/post/96819385296/the-hand-is-the-visible-part-of-the-brain
> 
> and part v. inspired by this: https://urdchama.tumblr.com/post/52529710868/i-cant-remember-if-this-really-happened-or-i-just
> 
> and vague references to we were kings bc I do accept the headcanon that armin's grandpa is a baker.
> 
> (can you tell armin's my fav.....ugh)
> 
> i’ve also decided that this goes w lorde’s hard feelings / loveless - “this is what they call hard feelings / of love”


End file.
